Click here to go to the next issue.

Sunday, February 11

GENE POOLE

Strategy of life

Ability to contract

Contracts around and holds that ability

Like a fist gripping a diamond

Never relaxing this grip

Success of this strategy

Has produced dreams of relaxation

Known variously as heaven, nirvana, satori

Yet all such dreams

Gossamer wisps of possibility

Are possible due literally due

To the terrific work done in contraction

Without which the fist would open

In relaxation diamond lost


JERRY K.

Interesting though lengthy article on Kubrick's 2001:

excerpts:

Bowman's ultimate realization that he is trapped is made
symbolically by Kubrick with the breaking of the wine glass.
Even after all that he has been through Bowman still makes
mistakes. The wine glass is like a zen koan that illuminates the
mind in a flash. His own fallibility thrusts the scene towards
it's climax as the old man dies on the bed and sees the monolith
for the last time. The Great Work of the stone is complete.
There is now a man, a human, who understands the greater
universe. This man also understands that he is trapped in a jail
that his own consciousness has designed. With the realization of
his own fallibility, and his own trapped spirit, he is finally
liberated from the realm of the hotel prison, or the world of
illusion. In that instant he understands what the book of stone
is trying to tell him. He lifts his hand in a gesture of
understanding. And in that moment he is transformed - without
dying - into the Starchild.

...........

There is a monolith that appears right after the opening
sequence with the magical, lunar eclipse. But where is it? It is
right in front of the viewer's eyes! The film is the monolith.
In a secret that seems to never have been seen by anyone - the
monolith in the film has the same exact dimensions as the
Cinerama movie screen on which 2001 was projected in 1968. This
can only be seen if one sees the film in it's wide-screen
format. Completely hidden, from critic and fan alike, is the
fact that Kubrick consciously designed his film to be the
monolith, the stone that transforms. Like the monolith, the film
projects images into our heads that make us consider wider
possibilities and ideas. Like the monolith, the film ultimately
presents an initiation, not just of the actor on the screen, but
also of the audience viewing the film. That is Kubrick's
ultimate trick. He slyly shows here that he knows what he is
doing at every step in the process. The monolith and the movie
are the same thing.

-------------------------------------------

DAN: I remain very intrigued by the opening sequence in which a
bone is transformed into a spaceship.

JERRY: I've heard that it is considered one of the greatest
'edits' in movie history. It's a movie unto itself.

DAN: So much was said there about how our evolution changed from
adaptation to an environment that dictates survival to
adaptation to our own tools, which dictate whose survival is
favored.

JERRY: It shows how we have immured ourselves in our own tools!
It is the effort of activists to break through the walls of our
tools, not so much to free anyone, because that's always an
illusion, but to make room for everyone, to make everyone
acceptable and accepted. When that room has been made, the group
it is made for will migrate toward it.

DAN: This movie seems to say there is a "next step" in which we
realize that there is a purely unknown force involved in our
evolution, and that force is the depth of our own unknown being.

-------------------------

BETH

I just finished writing this to insightpractice...I love how all
these email forums are just rooms in one single house...we are
together, we are one.

" 2001 has been my favorite movie for most of my adult life. I
cannot tell you anything about why, except the first time I
watched it, I "got" it...I got the whole thing of what we are
doing here, why we need to remember that we are one, what life
is all about and why we need to care for each other...the last
scene, with the wild and swirling colors...I could see past
present and future, and then it was over, and when the credits
ran, I lost it...this insight that had been so strong in me was
nowhere to be found, because I immediately called a friend, and
when he said "hello" I opened my mouth, and nothing was there
anymore...it is worse to lose something that you know you know,
than it is not to have ever gotten it in the first place. And I
wasn't looking when I started watching it..I was simply looking
forward to a good sci-fi movie. I have been searching ever
since, and I have never been able to get back that feeling.

It was a great movie...2010 wasnt as good, although it ended
well."



TIM GERCHMEZ


JERRY: You think you'll ever get to any of those satsangs? It would be
interesting to hear your report."

TIM: I was thinking about possibly attending the upcoming one with
Nirmala. Although I have to say, usually given the choice I
don't go out much, preferring to be alone most of the time (For
some reason there's just no motivation to get out much, ever --
like I'm entirely missing the 'motivation gene' -- in 8 years of
counseling I never did figure that out).

I did Email Nirmala, and he responded... here's his response for
anyone else in the Seattle area who's interested:

---------- I am glad you enjoyed the website. You are very
welcome at satsang in Bellevue this coming weekend. It is a
combination of a short silent meditation, direct teaching in the
form of an opening talk, questions and answers, and simple
sharing by the whole group. There is no ongoing commitment
required: you can come as often or as infrequently as you wish.
Although I also would suggest that there is a cumulative effect
that makes the satsangs more profound whenever it is possible to
spend a lot of time in satsang. These weekends are intended to
be an opportunity for a sort of mini-retreat without the cost or
hassle of traveling or paying for room and board. The satsangs
are free and open to all, and donations are appreciated also to
help cover the cost of my travel and expenses.



BETH AND TIM

TIM/OMKARA: Although I have to say, usually given the
choice I don't go out much, preferring to be alone most of the
time (For some reason there's just no motivation to get out
much, ever -- like I'm entirely missing the 'motivation gene' --
in 8 years of counseling I never did figure that out).>>

BETH: Hi Omkara,

Going through the same thing, and I have been for some time now.
It bothers me a little, but obviously not enough to either
change or find out why...part of it I had assumed, was the
availability of conversation here, part of it is by the time
work is over, both daily and weekly I am in no condition to drag
myself out, and I love being alone...the computer is company
when I want it, and I can turn this thing off when I don't, and
the television has lost it's allure totally. CDs or silence are?
is? heaven. I get bored and depressed with a lot of social
input, never bored and depressed with silence. Hmmm haven't
tried counseling yet. D'ya think I need it?

It is nice to know I am not any weirder than any others. :o)

beth

TIM: Dear Beth,

I don't think you need counseling unless it's *really* bothering
you or you feel it's disrupting your life in a major way. What
'other people think' means absolutely NOTHING... absolute zero,
zilch. If I've learned anything at all, I've learned that much.

If you asked my opinion, there's absolutely nothing 'wrong' with
you.

I've been a "loner" (negative connotations, eh?) most of my
life, and like it that way. I love being by myself too. For many
years it bothered me (mostly because I let what other people
think have a major effect), so I was in counseling (it wasn't
only for that specific thing, though).

Wasn't it Jesus who said "Be in the world, but not of it?" That
might get quoted pretty often (usually prescriptive rather than
descriptive), but is the idea really accepted? I don't think
so...

I think the key is to go beyond what 'other people think'.
Society rarely allow for habits it considers 'different'.

Society is not only "out there," it's in our heads as well.

Go beyond society.

Love,

Omkara (Tim)



TIM: If you think about it, it's downright weird that people
"know" others on the other side of the world (due to the
Internet), yet they don't know if anyone lives in the house next
to them, or if it's vacant...

LINDA: In one sense, I think this could be considered weird, but
in another sense not. Not in the sense that in reality we are
not separated by time and space or even separate at all, so it
is not weird that we can feel this togetherness via the Net, but
weird that we do not "know" this about everywhere and
everything. Or not weird, if considering that we're looking at
it in the mode of the ego, which, in my ego opinion is weird
anyway. I guess ego aside, isn't it great that the Knower knows
and in the Knower, we're all neighbors?

Anyway, all that aside, I would like to know my physical
neighbors better. I've just joined this group a couple of
minutes ago, and so I have not read all the e-mails where some
may tell where they're from. Anybody hail from Indianapolis?



TIM:

I also find it refreshing in the extreme talking with
children... but I think sometimes adults in the vicinity get a
little worried, because I don't talk to kids as 'adult-to-child'
but rather just as a person, and it even seems to confuse the
kids.

I can remember a long greyhound bus ride and sitting next to a
boy around age 10 or 11 (I was about 28 then), just having a
long, interesting conversation about a lot of things. When my
stop came around he was giving me a strange look... we had
become friends, but there was no socially acceptable context to
remain friends afterward... in the paranoid climate of the U.S.
I could probably be arrested for even giving him contact
information or something.

It's kind of sad such a paranoia exists, based only partially on
truth, but also overblown media reports making people think any
adult male who talks with kids 'not his own' is a paedophile...


DAN:
Our society is extremely fragmented
and stratified, and one feature
of this is that generations are assumed
to have little appropriate contact across
groupings by age. Fear of touch and anxiety
about intrusion are associated features.
All this anxiety builds frustration, movies
and other entertainment use violence
for temporary relief, and those who aren't
successful at regulating stress through
vicarious violence are "driven" to acts that
feed the fear and maintain the cycle of
our culture.

Cultural and financial pressures enforce
and ensure that this fragmentation
and individualization maintains, for
it is the basis of our competitive
consumer-oriented machine, which
feeds on itself in order to expand.

The information revolution is a two-edged
sword, for it has tended to further amplify
the divide between educated and uneducated,
haves and have-nots, with an amplified
focus on the individual
in relation to information and "getting ahead".

At the same time, there are many factors in our
culture that facilitate "opening" ... so it's a mixed
bag, and I include the technology of information
in this mixed bag.

I suppose there never has been yin without yang,
light without dark -- so life goes on as always,
moving into and as the unknown.

HUMANITATE:
Does self-realization lead to self-alienation? Does technology
contribute to this dilemma? Hmmmmmmmmm. Possible thread? Are non
dualists alienated from society? Is that why we are finding a
need for community? i.e. the CI???

JAN BARENDRECHT:
A good reason for communities has always been to ease
deconditioning, as the major part of it concerns the issue of
"relating to" and that includes issues like interpretation. This
is half of the story though...

The other half is that thoughts do have a power to materialize,
with well-known analogies that a human is but one conductor for
a thought current, so community enables a stronger current -
inducing other currents etc...

Another view on the matter is from the analogy that sentient
life is designed in such a way, that initially, each creature
will come to the conclusion to be the one spider in the center
of its web, that web and the other spiders just being
perceptions. When it finally dawns there are no spiders at all,
only a web, permanently under construction, it is said, that
could work transformative...



RON PERRYMORE

Sandeep Chatterjee" wrote: In string theory, the elementary
constituents of the Universe are not point particles but rather
one-dimensional vibrating filaments--and the different particles
such as electrons, muons, and quarks are simply different
vibrations or "musical notes" of the string. The Universe is a

cosmic symphony of these "notes"... -- Book review of The
ElegantUniverse, by Brian Greene in Frontier Perspectives from
the Center for Frontier Sciences at Temple

Ron: Seems to me that these little imaginary string things have
a conscious intention to become a complete and unified whole of
something. A human being becomes a complete and unified whole of
something when it realizes that in some holographic way that it
was the whole shebang in the first place. At least that's what
everyone seems to be saying, personally I only know that
wholeness in quick glances, given more often lately, but not
enough to put on my robe and slippers and harangue the multitude
about or for that matter to post to this list about. But I will.

I know that there is something bright, beautiful, and wonderful
beyond description going on, that only sticky identification
with this body and brain keeps from view.. but that is all I know.

And so from that place of the "vasty deep" I allow to be and
with intention abide this remembered emotional history of fear
and triumph. All illusory I am told but nonetheless painful and
sometimes tragic for many (a friend of a friend of mine
recently committed suicide). This spiritual agony was
apparently so very real to that man that he decided to share it
with everyone.

The only piece of advice I would offer to someone experiencing
that kind of agony is something that I did called a "master alignment
session". I won't try to explain it other than to say that after
I did it, the archetype that I have dramatized in this lifetime
began to dawn on me. In my case it was old Merlin the magician
and trickster, a guy who can be invisible while in plain view,
something I aspired to do in my whole lifetime of seeking,
masquerading as one alone without need or desire for anyone.
That session that lasted about an hour when frozen blocks of
energy patterns were shifted and freed by the young woman
facilitator and her and my "angels" as she put it, has had an
extraordinary and growing effect on this old hermit. I was in
that ~dark night of the soul~

I know well that old "what's the use" feeling and I sympathise
with all who are going through the insanity of seeking. She is
here in San Diego should someone like to contact her. She
doesn't have a web page that I know of and I had the sense that
she was interviewing me on our first phone conversation (maybe
to gauge my particular insanity <g>). At any rate I offer that
for whatever value it may have for those in pain and encourage
all not to endure it alone, I did but I needn't have, love,
acceptance and non judgmental peacefulness are everywhere
available in this wonderful time.

Thanks to all who share on this list. What rapturous thoughts
you have!

Ron



JERRY

I find that as I get older I get more social. I know I'll end up
in a nursing home on television clapping my hands and smiling
like a goofball while some old geezer is playing a fiddle or
something, while the voiceover is saying 'Residents of the Happy
Farm old age home finally have their fiddle player back...".
Yeah, solitude sounds real good right about now. This is the
real challenge: bringing us together while keeping us away from
the goddammed fiddler.

top of page